Thursday, November 17, 2011

Fall to Call with Alastair McLennan and Essi Kausaleinen

Co-Lab Editions No.4Curator: Marcio CarvalhoSunday, the 9th of October 2011

"Time we have is not so vital as time we make" (Alastair MacLennan in Rain, Rein, Reign)

Through their collaborative performance Alastair MacLennan and Essi Kausaleinen brought in a different pace of walking, of touching things around them, of breathing and thinking about the place and the time they spent there. Bringing installation art and performance together, using a rhythm reminiscent of rituals and a patience dilating not only time but also space, Essi Kausaleinen and Alastair MacLennan's Fall to Call created a fruitful harvest time.

MacLennan and Kausaleinen first met in Berlin where they began their collaboration. They wanted to meet each other in a free state of mind, to bring with them no expectations about the place or about each other. They wanted to discover common ground and common ideas at the actual place, together, without any kind of previous mediation. It's what they call “actuality”, being present in a specific place, dealing with the here and now, sharing time and space, and developing trust. Both artists move within the field of visual poetics, where words are not necessary to establish communication and spaces, regardless of size, begin to function as landscapes. They believe in the power of details, their artistic interventions are gentle, almost economical, yet at the same time radical.

While in Berlin, they also chose not to share images taken during their trips to the Botanical Garden on the Co-Lab-Editions website. For some previous Co-Lab-Editions partnerships it was essential that the artists’ collaboration was made public along the way. This time, the documentation of Essi Kausaleinen and Alastair MacLennan’s work would come to light only after their performance, not before it.

Working in the Botanical Garden Essi and Alastair shared time and space together in a process of looking for inspiration. And their performance at SAVVY was, according to their own words, a process of “sharing creation” with the public.